Antibiotics

Up to half of sexually active young people will get a sexually transmitted disease by the time they are 25, yet many don't seek testing because it may be difficult, costly or embarrassing. Public health officials nationally and in particularly affected cities like Baltimore, however, say they've found a method that seems to address the major hurdles — a website that supplies free in-home testing kits for three of the most commonly reported STDs. "The highest prevalence is in young adults, and we knew we had to reach these kids," said Charlotte A. Gaydos, a professor of infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

On March 13th you published a letter written by reader Lois Raimondi Munchel titled "Stop the spread of deadly bacteria in nursing homes. " The letter was timely. It should send alarm bells ringing not only through the hallways of our nursing homes but also through our hospitals and our operating rooms. Not too long ago, at the NIH hospital, deadly Klebseilla bacteria resistant to all antibiotics, were found. Fifty percent of patients with this bacterial infection will die. These lethal, resistant bacteria have appeared in hospitals up and down the East Coast.

Staph infections didn't used to cause much of a fuss. They would irritate skin but could easily be treated with antibiotics. Recently, however, antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria such as MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus , have been surfacing. Dr. Robert Ancona, St. Joseph Medical Center's chief of pediatrics and an infectious disease specialist, have been noticing more concerning MRSA infections in children lately. What is the difference between MRSA and other bacterial strains?

Hospitals aren't the only places where people can pick up a nasty "superbug. " A  University of Maryland -led team of researchers has found methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus , or MRSA, at sewage treatment plants in the mid-Atlantic and the Midwest. MRSA is a well-known problem in hospitals, where patients have picked up potentially fatal bacterial infections that do not respond to antibiotic treatment.  But since the late 1990s, it's also been showing up in otherwise healthy people outside of health-care facilities, prompting a search for sources in the wider community.

Q: My daughter has had three episodes of bronchitis this year which didn't seem to respond to antibiotics. She usually starts with a cold and then it settles into her chest with a cough and chest tightness. Why don't antibiotics help her? Could she be immune to them?A: We suspect your daughter is probably quite all right although we don't have all the information necessary to reassure you completely. As a first step, let us try to define precisely the word bronchitis, which means different things to different people.

Q: I was shocked and frightened by the sudden death of Jim Henson, the Muppets creator, from pneumonia. With all the progress that has been made in the treatment of infections, how could this happen to a healthy young man?Henson's pneumonia was produced by an exceptionally virulent strain of group A streptococcus, a bacteria best known for causing strep throat. This particular aggressive strain of streptococcus has now been recognized as the cause of a new type of severe illness called toxic shock-like syndrome (TSLS)

Researchers who examined feather remnants of slaughtered chickens have found that antibiotics banned by federal regulators may still be used in poultry production. The researchers from  the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health and Arizona State University looked for drug and other residue in the feather meal. The findings included amounts of fluoroquinolones, a spectrum of antibiotics used to treat serious bacterial infections in people, including infections that have become resistant to older antibiotic classes.

Researchers report that they have found evidence of banned antibiotics in poultry byproducts, suggesting that growers are evading a 2005 prohibition on their use in treating chickens and turkeys. Scientists at Johns Hopkins' Bloomberg School of Public Health and at Arizona State University detected fluoroquinolones, broad-spectrum antibiotics used to treat bacterial infections in people, as well as otherover-the-counter drugs and residues in feather meal, a common additive to chicken, swine, cattle and fish feed.  The Food and Drug Administration banned the use of fluoroquinolones in poultry production in 2005 amid concern about the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.  But in a study published in Environmental Science & Technology , the two schools' researchers report they found the banned drugs in 8 of 12 samples of feather meal collected from six states and China.

WASHINGTON - In the typical chicken house on the Eastern Shore, tens of thousands of cramped and clucking fowl munch on antibiotics that should be used to cure human illness, not prod chickens to fatten faster. Until recently, there was a storehouse of antibiotics that could handily fight even the nastiest of infectious diseases. But the overuse of these miracle drugs - in hospitals, consumer products, veterinary clinics, cattle feedlots and hog and chicken factories - is resulting in the spread of super bugs doctors may be unable to cure.

The Food and Drug Administration says it will test raw milk weekly around the nation to determine if it contains certain antibiotics.The agency said yesterday 250 locations across the country will be chosen for testing, and raw milk samples will be collected each week from five of these sites, selected randomly.The samples will be tested for the presence of eight sulfa drugs and three tetracycline drugs. The FDA said that when residues are found, the states will be told and the agency will help track down the source.

Researchers who examined feather remnants of slaughtered chickens have found that antibiotics banned by federal regulators may still be used in poultry production. The researchers from  the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health and Arizona State University looked for drug and other residue in the feather meal. The findings included amounts of fluoroquinolones, a spectrum of antibiotics used to treat serious bacterial infections in people, including infections that have become resistant to older antibiotic classes.

Researchers report that they have found evidence of banned antibiotics in poultry byproducts, suggesting that growers are evading a 2005 prohibition on their use in treating chickens and turkeys. Scientists at Johns Hopkins' Bloomberg School of Public Health and at Arizona State University detected fluoroquinolones, broad-spectrum antibiotics used to treat bacterial infections in people, as well as otherover-the-counter drugs and residues in feather meal, a common additive to chicken, swine, cattle and fish feed.  The Food and Drug Administration banned the use of fluoroquinolones in poultry production in 2005 amid concern about the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.  But in a study published in Environmental Science & Technology , the two schools' researchers report they found the banned drugs in 8 of 12 samples of feather meal collected from six states and China.

You're in an emergency room. You're worried. OK, maybe that's an understatement. Maybe you're terrified. This may not be the setting in which you always make your best decisions. But you won't get to take back any of the decisions you make in an ER, so you have to make the best decision you can the first time. Assuming that you don't have an immediately apparent catastrophic illness, here are four questions you can ask your doctor that may save you time and money - and perhaps even spare you or your child one of the complications that are sometimes associated with medical care.

Staph infections didn't used to cause much of a fuss. They would irritate skin but could easily be treated with antibiotics. Recently, however, antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria such as MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus , have been surfacing. Dr. Robert Ancona, St. Joseph Medical Center's chief of pediatrics and an infectious disease specialist, have been noticing more concerning MRSA infections in children lately. What is the difference between MRSA and other bacterial strains?

Former Gov. William Donald Schaefer remained hospitalized Saturday with "a little bit" of pneumonia but is responding to antibiotics, his friend and former aide Lainy LeBow-Sachs said. The 89-year-old Schaefer had some trouble breathing about 9 p.m. Thursday and was taken from the Charlestown retirement community in Catonsville to St. Agnes Hospital, LeBow-Sachs said. Describing the health of the former governor, comptroller and Baltimore mayor, LeBow-Sachs said it's "on and off. " "He's certainly not the governor you know.

It's getting to be the time of year when everyone seems to have a runny nose. Sometimes it's a cold or allergies. And sometimes it's sinusitis, or inflamed linings in the sinus cavities. The cavities become blocked and infected. Dr. Alan Oshinsky, an otolaryngologist at Mercy Medical Center, says it's not always easy to self-diagnose sinusitis, but there are treatments that can help. Question: What is sinusitis, and who is likely to develop it? Answer: Sinusitis means inflammation and infection in the paranasal sinuses.

I have been married over a year and use the pill as my form of birth control. When I need an antibiotic, I've been warned that such medicine can counteract the birth control pill. As a science major, I'm not satisfied just knowing that something "is"; I like to know "why." Can you explain exactly how oral contraceptives and antibiotics interact? And is it true that my husband and I should use backup contraception for a month after I stop the antibiotic, just to be sure?This interaction is both complicated and controversial.

A 40-year-old accountant, in treatment for leukemia at the University of Maryland Medical Center, gets infected with a tenacious bacteria that hangs on for two years despite large doses of antibiotic. Finally, in the middle of chemotherapy, his infection flares up again. He goes into septic shock and dies.A 2-year-old Randallstown girl catches a pneumococcus infection that, maddeningly, defies the first drugs used to treat it. It blooms into a life-threatening illness.Physicians discover that at least three bone-marrow transplant patients at Johns Hopkins Hospital harbor a weird type of the enterococcus bacteria.

Consumers who thought they were buying antibiotic-free chicken could receive $5 million in cash and coupons under a proposed settlement to a lawsuit contending that the nation's largest poultry producer falsely promoted its birds as being raised without drugs. The deal to end a class action lawsuit against Tyson Foods will get its first public hearing Friday, when a federal judge in Baltimore is scheduled to review it for fairness. If approved, thousands of U.S. consumers could receive refunds of up to $50 per household.

Myra Roseman, a retired bacteriologist and research associate with the department of epidemiology at what is now the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, died Nov. 21 from complications of dementia at the North Oaks retirement community. She was 88. Myra Goldenberg, the daughter of an engineer and homemaker, was born in Baltimore and raised in Forest Park. After graduating from Western High School in 1937, she was 19 when she earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry and bacteriology from Goucher College.